1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method of testing the performance of a CD-ROM drive, and more particularly, to a method of testing the performance of a spindle motor to test the durability of the spindle motor.
2. Related Art
A compact disc read-only-memory (CD-ROM) drive is an important peripheral unit of a computer system, and operates upon a compact disk which provides a large amount of data storage capacity. A spindle motor is necessary used to rotate the compact disk at speeds typically on the order of several thousand revolutions-per-minute to ensure high speed data access. Therefore, performance of the spindle motor is critical to providing a high level of data storage system performance and reliability. Any changes in the performance of the spindle motor must be detected early in its service life in order to minimize the probability of intermittent and catastrophic failure of the CD-ROM drive. There are a number of spindle motor predictive failure techniques for detecting degradation in spindle motor performance during the service life of the spindle motor such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,612,845 for Method And Apparatus For In-Situ Detection Of Data Storage System Spindle Motor Performance Degradation, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,339 for Method And Apparatus For Detecting Degradation In Data Storage System Spindle Motor Performance both issued to Smith. In addition, the reading operation of CD-ROM drives may be tested in the manner disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,168 for CD-ROM Drive Testing Method issued to Kwon and assigned to the instant assignee. However, there is no specific testing technique available for testing the durability of a spindle motor in a CD-ROM drive. Since there is no specific command for repeatedly rotating and halting only the spindle motor, the tray must be repeatedly moved in and out to test the durability of the spindle motor. That is, the durability of the spindle motor is normally tested by repeatedly rotating and halting the spindle motor. Consequently, the cycle of repetition of the rotation/halt operation of the spindle motor becomes longer, and problems associated with the quality of other components in the spindle motor assembly may occur. As a result, it has been difficult to test the durability of only the spindle motor in the CD-ROM drive.